Saying one thing and doing another has been a hallmark of the Joe Biden administration. Not least on the Taiwan question.
Despite the Biden administration reiterating its stance that it does not support "Taiwan independence", the latest arms sale to Taiwan represents the 16th time it has sold weapons to the island's secessionist-minded Democratic Progressive Party authorities since it took office on Jan 20, 2021.
According to a statement issued by the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency on Tuesday, the US State Department has approved the request of the "Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States" to buy return, repair and reshipment spare parts for military aircraft and related equipment, as well as technical and logistics support services in a deal worth an estimated $228 million.
The return, repair and reshipment spare parts will be transferred from government stocks.
The deal, which seriously violates the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiques, especially the Aug 17 Communique of 1982, once again sends a message of support to the separatist forces on the island.
As such, Beijing was fully justified in announcing on Wednesday sanctions against nine US companies involved in arms sales to Taiwan — Sierra Nevada Corporation, Stick Rudder Enterprises, Cubic Corporation, S3 Aerospace, TCOM Ltd Partnership, TextOre, Planate Management Group, ACT1 Federal and Exovera.
Beijing also announced on the same day that it will stop implementing the goodwill policy of exempting import tariffs on 34 agricultural products originating in Taiwan starting from Sept 25. The agricultural products include fresh fruits, vegetables and aquatic products, according to a statement issued by the Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council.
It is the US' connivance with and support for the separatist forces on the island that are the biggest threat to cross-Strait peace and stability and cause the greatest disruption to the real status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
This was evidenced by naval ships and warplanes of the US and some of its allies transiting through the Taiwan Strait on Friday in a show of force almost at the same time as the US delegation attending the Xiangshan security forum in Beijing was vowing that the US seeks to strengthen exchanges with China to avoid misjudgment.
The US justifies its actions by claiming that the challenges to the US posed by China exceed those of the Cold War.
"Frankly, the Cold War pales in comparison to the multifaceted challenges that China presents," US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell told a House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday.
But as shown elsewhere, the challenges that threaten regional peace and stability come from the US, not China. This was reinforced by Campbell calling for Washington to maintain a bipartisan focus on China and to speed up US naval shipbuilding and the capacity of the US' defense manufacturing base.
"This is a naval time," Campbell said, saying that increasing the speed with which US naval ships are designed and built is "the most important thing" that the US needs to do over the course of the next 10 years.
He also said that a summit of the Quad countries — Australia, India, Japan and the US — that Biden will host on Saturday would include "big announcements", with US "Indo-Pacific" Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo tasked with helping "fuse together" a military approach in the region.
All that being said, if the US side is hell-bent on viewing China as a threat to its hegemony and turning what could otherwise be win-win cooperative relations into a zero-sum game, it will only be a matter of time before their competition veers into a cold, or even hot, war.
Underestimating Beijing's resolve to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity is a guaranteed way to set the two countries on a collision course.
